Late that night I myself left the Grand, and, assuming a name that was not my own, took a room at the Midland, in order to commence my observations upon her movements. It was certainly a risky business, for I knew not when I might encounter her in the vestibule, in the lift, or in the public rooms. As soon as my room was assigned to me, I glanced through the list eagerly, but it was evident that if she were there she, too, had changed her name. In the long list of visitors was one, that of Mrs Slade. Slade? The name was familiar. It was that of the doctor who had given me back my sight. That name struck me as being the most probable. She occupied a room on the same floor as mine, numbered 406. The door of that room I intended to watch.
My vigilance on the morrow was rewarded, for about eleven o’clock in the morning I saw Edna emerge from the room dressed to go out. She passed my door and descended by the stairs, while I took my hat and swiftly followed her at a safe distance from observation.
The porter called her a hansom, and I saw her neat, black-robed figure mount into the conveyance. She had a letter in her hand, and read the address to the porter, who in turn repeated it to the driver.
Meanwhile, I had entered another cab, and telling the man to keep Edna’s cab in sight, we drove along King’s Cross Road and Farringdon Street to the City, passing along Gresham Street and Lothbury. Suddenly the cab I was following turned into Austin Friars, while my driver, an intelligent young fellow, pulled up at the corner of Throgmorton Street and said—
“We’d better wait here, sir, if you don’t want the lady to notice us. She’s going into an office at number 14, opposite the Dutch Church.”
“Get down,” I said, “and try and find out whose office she’s gone into,” and I added a promise to give him an extra gratuity for so doing.
“Very well, sir,” he answered. I sat back, hiding my face in a newspaper for fear of being recognised in that great highway of business, while he went along Austin Friars to endeavour to discover whose offices she had entered.
Some ten minutes later he returned with the information that the lady had entered the office of a moneylender named Morrison.
The thought occurred to me that she was perhaps still endeavouring to raise the loan for Prince Ferdinand. If so, however, why had she left the Bath Hotel and endeavoured to conceal her identity under another name?
After twenty minutes or so she came out rather flushed and excited, stood for a moment in hesitation upon the kerb, and then giving her cabman an address was driven off. I, of course, followed, but judge my astonishment when the cab pulled up in Old Broad Street and she alighted at Winchester House. After a few moments she found the brass plate bearing my name, and ascending to my office, for what purpose I knew not, and, fearing to reveal my presence in London, I could not ascertain.